Posts Tagged ‘hose’

I’ve taken pot-shots at the theater industry’s somewhat misaligned concept of proportional servings in the past, but I thought I was due to revisit the comedic devise for today’s strip.

I tried coming up with a good joke for today’s release of The Cat in the Hat, but I kept coming back to punch lines involving raves, The Grateful Dead or related drug humor. Frankly, we’re just not that kind of comic.

Gothika is the other big release today and I couldn’t think of a damn thing to make fun of there other than how bad Halle Berry’s hair looks. But I guess it’s alright, ‘cuz she’s supposed to be cra-zay!

I think my movie options this weekend are kind of slim, but I don’t really care. My good friend Nick is coming to visit from Minneapolis this weekend and we’re gonna tear it up Iowa-style!

I guess I didn’t mention how my experience at the Henry Rollins spoken word show went on Wednesday. Well, it went okay!

We didn’t get there until about 10 minutes before he went on. So we were left scrambling for seats. We ended up in the balcony probably a good 200 feet away from him. This was a change in scenery for me because in my usual fan-boy way I would drag everyone to the show an hour in advance to get good seats. I’ve seen him 4 other times before this and we’ve always been just a few rows away from the stage.

Not that I minded, particularly. We could still hear him great. That is, whenever the two girls sitting next to me decided to discontinue one of their several lengthy conversations. And what was up with the girl in front of us taking pictures with some kind of high-powered flash? I think it may have bleached the skin of people sitting in the 3 rows in front of her.

Rollins was cool. He seemed more mellow than usual. He told a lot of good stories. Standouts included his tale of catching a burglar as he was in the process of breaking into his home and getting out of jury duty. He shared a few “Hollywood” stories, too – talking about his attendance at the premieres of The School of Rock and Kill Bill. He also talked about being dissed by Sheryl Crow.

After the show, Cami and I hung around outside to see if we could get a picture with Henry. But after a half hour, we decided to bolt. We had an hour long drive ahead of us at 10:30 at night and work the next day. On top of that, we had to pick up Truman at my parents place on the way home. We didn’t want him to be cooped up in his crate all day, so my folks babysat for us. How cool are they?

I bought Final Fantasy X-2 yesterday and I’m looking forward to finding some time to commit to it. What I’ve played so far is really a lot of fun. I enjoyed Final Fantasy X immensely. I’ve played all the way through it 3 times. It’s probably my favorite game of all time.

I don’t want to come off sounding like a FF fan boy, so I think I’ll cut it off there.

I hope everyone has a good weekend. Next weekend is Thanksgiving and I’m sure that’s going to throw a lot of us into upheaval. Hopefully you’ll still make time to visit the site. I plan to keep updating through the holiday.

If you haven’t joined the forums yet, look into it. We’re having a lot of fun in there.

Thor has a big hammer, right? Breaking a giant pane of glass shouldn’t be a problem for the God of Thunder.

We’ll see.

I don’t know why, but I’m still amused by people in cardboard costumes having a casual conversation while a roaring blaze nearly engulfs them. It’s basically the height of hubris. The “we’ve got this” attitude Tom is wearing right now… I dunno. I’m just really enjoying it.

I’m going to try and get another comic done this week, but I’ve been lousy about holding up my promises so far. So let’s just say if I get it done, everyone will be pleasantly surprised.

SIDEBAR: I received an e-mail from Amazon last week notifying me that they were closing my vendor account due to “inactivity.”

In their e-mail, they said I could either request to have my books sent back to me (at my expense) or they would destroy them. They were really black and white about it and it kind of bummed me out.

I was flirting with the idea of having them be destroyed. Mostly because I’m cheap and I didn’t want to pay the shipping. But also because it kind of felt like a failure to send your books to Amazon and for them to say “Yeah, we don’t want these anymore.”

Of course, in the end, I opted to have my books sent back to me. I don’t know what the cost will be yet, but it’s the right thing to do. I’m not big on destroying books – especially books I put my heart and soul into.

Selling my books on Amazon was never really a moneymaker for me, anyway. It was more a point of pride – a way for me to look at the accomplishment of self-publishing and saying “See?! SEE?! It’s in a store.”

Okay, yeah. An online store. But still a store.

It doesn’t matter. I always sold more books through my store and at conventions anyway.

Anyway, long story short… we all know the comic is ending soon and I’m still sitting on, like… A LOT of inventory.

I have mostly odds and ends when it comes to the shirts, but I’d like to get rid of everything, if I can. I have many more books to get rid of, though. And, frankly, they take up way more space.

I don’t have inventory numbers right now on the books. I’m hoping to count them out sometime this weekend. I can say that of the three books, I probably have less than 100 of Theater Hopper: Year One. Maybe less than 75. If you want one, now’s the time to get it.

Yeah, so it looks like Jared’s Mjölnir wasn’t forged from Uru metal after all.

Pity about that.

I’ve pretty much come to the conclusion that Theater Hopper can’t end on August 6 like I originally anticipated. That’s okay. You’re probably okay with it, too. At least, I assume you’re okay with it?

Maybe I shouldn’t assume…

The point being that I have a handful of comics I need to produce to get Tom, Cami and Jared out of the theater before I do the final coda and there’s no way I can get there before August 6.

Incidentally, WHY HASN’T TOM AND JARED’S COSTUMES CAUGHT ON FIRE YET?

Movie magic, folks!

Switching gears, I (like many of you) saw The Dark Knight Rises over the weekend. Actually, I took Friday afternoon off from work so I could avoid the crowds and catch it in IMAX – something I rarely ever do.

I was talking to someone about the urgency I felt to see The Dark Knight Rises. For example, it didn’t bother me that I saw The Amazing Spider-Man a week after it came out. But I was gonna be damned if anyone was going to spoil The Dark Knight Rises for me!

Of course it’s nearly impossible to talk about The Dark Knight Rises at this point without mentioning the tragedy in Aurora, Colorado. Pundits have been crawling all over the aftermath of the senseless violence committed by James Holmes.

What upsets me most about it is that – to me – a movie theater is a sacred place. Quite honestly, it’s as close as I get to religion. It’s a safe place. An ensconce from the horrors of the real world. Like a lot of people, I go to the movies to get out of my head for a few hours, to put the rest of the world behind me. The victims of Aurora were punished for this. For watching a movie. It’s senseless and cruel under any circumstance. But it hits especially close to home for me.

I had a few people express concern about me going to see the movie in light of the tragedy. They feared copycat crimes. It’s a reasonable concern, I suppose. But I also felt determined not to let one lunatic with a gun dictate the terms of my life. So I went.

I’m glad I did. The Dark Knight Rises is a fantastic movie, richly layered, dense and rewarding. It doesn’t feel as long as its 165 minute run time would lead you to believe. It moves along at a solid clip.

At times I almost felt like the movie could have been split into two chapters to help flesh out some of the plot contrivances. Without getting into spoilers, characters show up at the most serendipitous times for the most implausible reasons. I can suspend disbelief, but leaning too heavily on “Because he’s Batman!” doesn’t always ring true – especially within the down-to-Earth environment Christopher Nolan has established in his films.

In the aggregate, however, I think Nolan’s three films work beautifully together. There are callbacks to the previous two films inside The Dark Knight Rises that reward those who have paid attention without winking or clubbing the audience over the head with “Hey, remember this? You liked this in the last movie, didn’t you?”

Long story short – if you’ve invested any time or thought in the previous two Batman films, you owe it to yourself to check out The Dark Knight Rises. Ultimately I think it’s one of the great movie trilogies. These films, their independent themes and the overarching themes are going to be discussed and dissected for years to come.

The Dark Knight Rises is a movie that sticks with you. I’m still thinking about it five days later – the hallmark of any good film. Having seen it in IMAX, I’m eager to see it again on a regular movie screen. As impressive as the movie was in that format, I think seeing it a second time will give me an opportunity to pick up on more of the nuances. And – call me optimistic – but I think it’ll play better the second time around, too.

That’s all I have for now. Stay tuned as the next few comics detail the final escape from the burning theater!